Feng Shao Feng and Daniel Chan are Rival Kings Fighting for Ariel Lin in King of Lan Ling

It always feels nice when a reported drama casting turns out to be true, as opposed to dangling dream pairings before fans and then going “oops” afterwards. The cast of the upcoming idol period drama Lan Ling Wang (The King of Lan Ling or Masked Beauty) attended a press conference this week in Beijing to kick off filming. The two male leads Feng Shao Feng and Daniel Chan were both there, but leading lady Ariel Lin had to video conference in from Taiwan. I’m thrilled because the final casting did turn out to be the three leads I posted about a few weeks ago (above is the first concept drama poster from the production company showing the costume designs for the three leads), plus George Hu is also joining this cast. Nice. The love triangle will be between Ariel and Feng Shao Feng as the King of Lan Ling and Daniel as the King of Northern Zhou. I love Ariel and find her beauty natural and luminous, but I have to laugh that she’s going to be out-prettied by her two leading men for sure. What makes this period drama my most anticipated C-drama of this year isn’t just the entire cast, but the fact that the drama will be produced by Chen Yu Shan, the producer of Material Queen. I loved everything about MQ except for the writing, so I know this drama will be just breathtakingly gorgeous. Gimme now!

Aaah, I’m so excited for this! (not so much the dubbing, but that can’t be helped, and I’m sure they’ll find a good dubber… I think the one who did Ariel’s characters in TWFX and LOCH isn’t doing dubbing any more) Any idea of which character George Hu’s playing yet?

I am so excited for this. I really prefer Ariel in historical rather than modern (beside ISWAK 1&2). She looks good in historical costumes and her acting is always spot on. I love her in TWFX and LOCH. Cross my fingers that the writing isn’t going to be Material Queen level. That went to crap the second half.

george hu is lookin’ HOT there! i don’t usually notice him all that much, but dang! *drool…* and ahahaha, daniel chan’s hair reminds me of the hair vaness sported during the last half of Material Queen > <

Glad Ariel Lin will make another drama, but disappointed it will be a mainland Chinese and not Taiwan drama. CANNOT stand watching and listening to mainland Chinese dramas where they dub the actors/actresses voices. Just tried to watch “Xia Jia 3 Daughters” with Roy Qiu (whom we love)… they dubbed his voice that made him sound angry like he was yelling at everyone. Until mainland Chinese drama industry realize that the actor’s OWN voice is part of his/her acting, they will find it difficult to compete in the Asian idol drama market. Exception is tolerated when the Korean actors/actresses join the Taiwan cast… since they make an effort for the dubbed voice to sound more compassionate, as in “Fondant Garden” (a total joy to watch) and “Skip Beat”.

Let us start a campaign to abolish DUBBING… just using subtitles is more preferred. Let the actors/actresses speak with their own voices.

That would only work if they petitioned that all actor/actresses learned to act out different accents. Unfortunately especially Taiwanese/HK actors acting in the mainland still have heavy accents that seem weird particular in historical/ancient drama settings. Like a getting an actor with a modern American accent in Medieval England playing an English person. It just comes off weird. Yes, an actor’s voice is part of the acting but sometimes the actor just cannot act out the right accent. I think that’s why they do it in Mainland movies, for a standard accent.

As for dramas, it’s also simply too noisy on set (fans come to watch/crew/passerby) and the quality of the voices just isn’t good enough. In many cases the actor/actress dub over their own voices because it was too noisy on set. That or their accents are really wrong for the part they’re playing.